Militarism and non-state actors: ‘the other invasion’

'What they call
transnational development companies. For us they represent death and
destruction’, yet when it comes to the pursuit of justice through law, too often
activists are on the wrong side. Jennifer Allsopp reports from Belfast at the Nobel Women’s Initiative Conference.

Several plenaries and workshops that I have attended in the
last two days at the Nobel
Women’s Initiative conference here in Belfast have, in addition to
demonstrating the central
role of states in committing, perpetuating and tolerating violence,
shed more light on the role of non-state actors in perpetuating militarism and
insecurity. As one participant put it this afternoon, ‘in the world we live in
we’re talking about militarised non-state actors, global neoliberalism...the
outsourcing of responsibility. This demands different strategies in terms of
how we respond to this global proliferation of non-state threats of security’.

In a presentation which sought to draw attention to the
relationship between conflict, climate change and social justice, climate
lawyer Farhana Yamin similarly explained: ‘corporations...have corporate police
officers and militaries of their own. They are bigger than states. We have to
use our inventiveness to challenge what’s going on’.

Non-state actors and
insecurity

The role of
non-state actors in global insecurity has received much more attention in
recent years, in, for example, the 2010 report by
the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Right Defenders. The theme was also a recurring one at
the 2012 AWID conference on Women Transforming Economic Power where 2,500 women activists from more than 150 different
countries came together. One of the main non-state perpetrators
discussed by speakers today was transnational companies. Introducing
today’s plenary, Cynthia McKinney, a politician and activist from the US, reported that such companies
often operate in a climate of government complicity and with ‘total disregard
for indigenous cultures’.

Speaking on the panel on “Demanding Accountability and
Regaining Our Moral Compas”, Aura Lolita Chavez Ixcaquic, Co-founder and
Coordinator of the K’iche
People’s Council in Guatemala, described the situation of
militarised environmental destruction occurring in her region caused by
companies investing in mining, hydroelectric power and oil monoculture. They
have another term for this development in their region: it’s ‘la otra invasiòn’ (the other
invasion). ‘In our town we have rebuilt our social fabric after the 36 years of
war during which we had a militarisation, genocide and a burning of the land’
Chavez Ixcaquic explained, ‘the new invasion for us is the sacking and
destruction of the land and the death of the land of people – what they call
transnational development companies. For us they represent death and
destruction’.

This devastation crosses borders freely. Crystal Lameman, an
activist with Beaver Lake
Cree Nation and Sierra Club, Canada described how her community has
been similarly devastated by the onslaught of oil sands and ground pipes. Such
actors are increasingly able to penetrate and instrumentalise the state.
Referring to recent measures by the Canadian government which have decimated
environmental protections Lameman claimed ‘our government is being run by this
industry’.

Recent measures listed by Lameman include the pulling out of
the Kyoto agreement and Bills C35 and C35. The latter is known by the Green
Party of Canada as ‘the
environmental devastation act’. The consequence of these measures,
Lameman explains, is that in addition to the loss of life, whole ways of life
are being destroyed: ‘we become economic hostages in our own
communities...we’re constantly having to deal with atrocities...we now have the
Sahara desert in what was once forest. That cannot be reclaimed’. She described
a situation where fish don’t taste good anymore, moose have puss under their
skin and children are airlifted to local hospitals because they have drunk
contaminated water.

Tactics to tackle non-state
actions and to reclaim our security

This morning’s conference workshops focussed on some of the
tactics used to challenge emerging state and non-state actors in order to
reclaim our security, ranging from nonviolent direct action to legal challenge.
Though, as was stressed throughout today, campaign tactics depend on context,
the workshops anticipated many of the methods described by Lameman and Chavez
Ixaquic in their accounts of stepping up to challenge human rights abuses in
their communities.

For Chavez Ixcaquic, nonviolent direct action is a core part
of their movement to say si a la vida (yes
to life); part of both creating and asserting themselves in a space of
consultation with the authorities. To date their movement has consulted more
than 1 million people in 85 different consultation processes, and together, she
explains, they have said ‘no
to the transnational companies, no to the mining, yes to life’. Though
peaceful, in today’s discussion Chavez Ixcaquic explained how these
consultations have nevertheless become militarised: ‘our consultations are a
festival of life but they sent out the soldiers’. As her presentation moved
from photos of armed personnel in black riot gear charging forwards to images
of people eating, everyone looked slightly bemused. She then explained that
their response to this militarisation was to feed the soldiers. But to what
reaction? ‘Instead of repressing us’, she said, ‘they joined us.’

The main tactic which Lameman, in turn, expounded on in her
presentation on the situation in Beaver Lake Cree Nation was that of
documentation and legal challenge. The First Nations people are taking the
government to court, she explained, in defence of their constitutionally
protected rights. The case, which began in May 2008, is making good headway,
Lameman reported. Indeed on April 30th 2013 the courts announced
that there would be a trial. This is the first time in Canada’s history, she
explained, that a petroleum constitutional challenge has been given the green
light.

‘I’m a terrorist?’ –
on whose side is the law

The challenges to the work of Lameman, Chavez Ixacquic and
many other activists here are many, not least because of the violence and
persecution they face on the ground. When it comes to the pursuit of justice
through law in particular, Yamin explained, too often activists are on the
wrong side: ‘many of the people who are now listed and surveyed are
environmental activists. Suddenly we have become part of the problem.’

Chavez Ixacquic explained that she currently has 22 law
suits against her, the last of which calls her a threat to national security
and a threat to the constitution of her country. ‘I’m a terrorist?’ she asks us, standing on the podium speaking
with contagious humour and a slightly incredulous smile, ‘me?’. ‘If they say
that I’m a terrorist for loving life then I have a different version of what a
terrorist is’. She also explained that on June 4th last year ‘they tried
kill me. They sent criminals to try to kill me. They were men with violent
weapons’, she continued, ‘but they were unable to achieve their goal...’.

Lameman too spoke of her recent experience of being served a
threat of defamation and conspiracy law suit and, in particular, the toil that
takes on her personal life and activism. It’s both shocking but also not that
surprising, she says: ‘I’m standing here as a woman trying to take on one of
the biggest industries in the world.’

The stakes in ‘rising up’ as Iranian Nobel Peace Prize
Laureate Shirin Ebadi called on participants to do this morning are clearly
high, especially when it comes to situations of insecurity or militarism which
are reinforced by the nexus of state power and corporate impunity. Discussions
on what one participant called ‘the price of voice’ too, have no easy answers.
Yet the challenges we face, whether it be insecurity, violence and/or
environmental degradation don’t either. Yasmin explained that in 2012, for
example, extreme weather drove more than 32 million people from their homes
and, according to the 2012 World
Energy Outlook,
within 5 years we will have “locked-in” a 2 degree rise in temperate through
the construction of high-carbon infrastructure such as coal-fired power
stations.

How, in this urgent context, conference participants asked,
can we not act to stop impunity and to support those working to recapture the
state by using law to prosecute those who would jeopardise our human security?
How too can we act in solidarity with the work of people like Lameman and
Chavez Ixcaquic? With the students in Doha who, Yasmin reports, have recently
held their first ever citizens' march for climate justice with the message ‘we
are more than oil’? How, Chavez Ixcaquic asks, can we say ‘Si a la vida’? This
is one of several questions around which participants will seek to draw
conclusions in the remaining day of the conference.

This article is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 licence.
If you have any queries about republishing please contact us.
Please check individual images for licensing details.

openDemocracy 50.50

100% independent media covering gender, sexuality and social justice – worldwide. Today we need this more than ever. Every £1 goes into producing and publishing more in-depth and critical journalism, commentary and analysis from women from around the globe. Contribute today.

Tracking the backlash

Growing and globalising networks of conservative and fundamentalist groups are pushing back against our sexual and reproductive rights. 50.50 investigates.

50.50 columnists

Tiffany Kagure MugoAFRO-SEXUALITY SPEAKEASYTalking about sex, sexual identity and sexuality in an easy and lubricated way, taking some of the serious out of the sexual and reproductive health and rights conversation.

Claudia TorrisiL'ITALIA FEMMINISTAMonthly features about gender and human rights in Italy. Reporting on sexism, racism, poverty and other connected systems of oppression. Mediterranean intersectionality.

Recent comments

openDemocracy is an independent, non-profit global media outlet, covering world affairs, ideas and culture, which seeks to challenge power and encourage democratic debate across the world. We publish high-quality investigative reporting and analysis; we train and mentor journalists and wider civil society; we publish in Russian, Arabic, Spanish and Portuguese and English.